Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: "The Body of Christ has AIDS"

Friday, February 29, 2008

"The Body of Christ has AIDS"

The Mission statement for the Pan African Province of Christian Brothers reads....
Our mission is
the liberation of oppressed youth
through broad based education and care,
leading to a life free from poverty,
ignorance, injustice and HIV/AIDS

During the months of September –December 2007, one of the themes we dealt with in the novitiate was HIV/AIDS. Throughout the month of September our activities included self-informative classes on the pandemic and group discussions. We also had the opportunity to meet with people living with HIV and people who have been working with HIV patients for years. One of the things we learnt from their rich experiences was how to live and deal with people infected with HIV.

The peak of our activities was on October 1. We decided to dedicate that day to the HIV/AIDS patients we had come to know. We invited them to our house and spent the day together with them interacting and socializing, expressing our solidarity with them and pledging our support and prayers.
December 1st, 2007 was another significant day. The whole novitiate community joined the local and international community and victims of HIV/AIDS to observe World HIV Day. The venue was the local main market-place, Aboabou market. There the attendance was called upon to act and do all they could to fight the disease and the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS.
Just as Teresa of Avila says: `Christ has no body now but ours, no hands, no feet, upon this earth but ours’. So if we are the body of Christ, it is our responsibility to reach-out to build the reign of God.
Sonny Kanneh

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What do we want this novitiate to be?

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If we don’t do what we believe in, then we’ll end up believing in what we do”. Without a vision that is authentic and alive to guide our actions, then we can settle for rationalizing the status quo or what is convenient and comfortable.
One of the first things the new team in Tamale did was to spend time beginning to articulate its vision of a novitiate beyond the basics laid down in our Constitutions. Here are some elements of what we came up with:
Novitiate is a journey, a process that involves KNOWING, EXPERIENCING and CHOOSING.
It is an INITIATION into Christian Brother religious life, so a “rite of passage” into a new identity, a time of learning and testing.
Novitiate confronts the novices with the Brother’s vocation as a call to brotherly solidarity and community, not to privilege, status and security.
It involves exploration of the basic values of faith and vocation, and the challenge to embrace these out of personal conviction and free choice.
Novitiate means understanding that a religious vocation makes a claim on the whole of the person and his life, including his inner life, his relationships and his professional activity (ministry). Furthermore, it challenges the novice to see the dynamic inter-relationship of these areas and to learn what their integration means.
Novitiate is a time of DISCERNMENT. The novice learns more deeply who he is, and what this Christian Brother life is. There is a constant back-and-forth movement between these two poles as an answer is sought to the question, “Is this where I am meant to be? Is this the life that will enable me to find my true self in God?”